Dima, 2010, from Stunt Bikers by Luis Belmonte Diaz

Something I often find myself thinking about is the difference between a practice and a project.

A practice is a daily routine; it's showing up to do creative work...even when nothing happens; it's never leaving the house without a camera; it's writing things down in a notebook; it's posting photos (even your weaker ones) on a blog; it's literally anything you do day-to-day to move your work forward--or sometimes just take in what surrounds you.

A project is something else entirely. Visit any photographer's portfolio website (too many to pick from, but literally try any) and you will find projects in a list on the lefthand side, or front and center in a slideshow. A project is hard to define because, as we've seen throughout the competition, there are so many different ways to make work. Distinct from looking, thinking and recording day-to-day, a project means action.

Scrolling through contenders, I think about what each photographer set out to do, or what irresistible possibilities they could not ignore. For contender Luis Belmonte Diaz that possibility is knowing more about things that catch his eye by getting right up close and taking photos.

Oil, 2010, from Stunt Bikers by Luis Belmonte Diaz

Luis writes:

Passing by the Ermitage in St. Petersburg, I saw a couple of boys riding what looked like very weird motorbikes. The vision of these drivers and their machines fascinated me immediately.

I spent a few days in the square waiting for the rain to stop and photograph the drivers, their machines, as well as the asphalt, looking for the unstable equilibrium that had attracted me the first time I saw them, that same tension I also found between machines and asphalt.

The best way to view Stunt Bikers is how Luis has sequenced it on his website. Scrolling from left to right, tightly cropped shots of faces in helmets and stripped down motorbikes are punctuated by traces of burned rubber and swirls of oil. The images amplify each other and create an unconventionally close-up portrait of this sport.

A project like this can be a catalyst for something--like interaction with a random group of people. But what made me think of practice and projects in the first place is how this series is a step beyond spontaneous, but not overly conceived. In practice, one might pass by the very weird motorbikes, snap a photograph, and keep on walking. To spend days getting to know something that catches your eye seems to lie somewhere in between.

You can view more projects at Luis's website, including the full Stunt Bikers series and the similar In Transit.